First: I just finished shooting a video I had a lot of fun making, an improvisation for iPad and Octatrack that’s built around an audio snippet of completely unknown origin. The previous owner of my OT left a few recordings on the memory card, and one of them stuck with me and it led me down an interesting road when I started to work with it more. I’m writing up a post about that process, and will share it in the coming days when I have time to export/upload the video and resume the usual programming here.
In the meantime, I thought it would be fun to do something a little different for subscribers here. I’ve picked up a few new paid subs, and I truly, deeply, sincerely thank you for that! Especially these days, with twins coming in 2 months and lots of preparatory home projects underway…
As a token of my appreciation for your support, would like to share a preview of 4 tracks from my new album called “Where substance meets emptiness.”
Quick sidebar: I also maintain a Bandcamp subscription; I share at least 2-3 recorded pieces of music there every month (so far this year, I’ve shared 6 EPs, a “secret” 7 hour long sleep album, and this 4-track preview). The cost is the same as here, at $5/month, but there is also a “Tier 2” for $8/month which grants you all of the music I release there, past and future, as well as access to all of the past and future paid posts on this page. This is a better value for anyone interested in following and supporting me on both platforms.
Anyway - I hate the process of promotion but I wanted to mention it mostly because I’m trying to “synchronize” my presence online across YouTube, Bandcamp, and Substack as closely as possible. For instance: an ideal working flow for me is to share demos, ideas and improv jams on YouTube, write about the process of creating them here on Substack, and hopefully use those sounds (in part or in whole) as the basis for the finished albums I distribute on Bandcamp. A sort of real-time creative cycle at work.
Now that that’s out of the way…
Where substance meets emptiness
What follows next are 4 unmastered preview tracks taken from my next full length album called "Where substance meets emptiness". The album is 8 tracks long and roughly 42 minutes in length, and features a good deal of rhythmic, pulsing, glitched-out ambience. I thought these 4 pieces form a nice representative sample of its softer side, and thought it would be fun to share how things are shaping up.
The album is inspired by the writings of Haruki Murakami. All of the titles were taken from sentence fragments that caught my eye in recent reading of "Kafka on the Shore." I adore the mystical, dream-like qualities of his stories, in which everyday actions and plot lines are suddenly interrupted with utterly surreal and unbelievable twists. I wanted to record music that resembled that same whimsical and ethereal nature. There are some of the hallmarks of “my sound” spread throughout this album, but to accompany the more grounded and recognizable elements, I used lots of spatial and panning effects to make certain parts sound more distant and disjointed, stuttering rhythms that don’t quite lock in perfectly for the duration of the song, and a ton of mistakes and imperfection in the way things are recorded, generally speaking. I also recruited a few friends to send me random field recordings of their choosing so that I could work in some more natural sound sources amidst all the digital processing. The whole thing is intended to feel fleeting and mysterious. Maybe that only comes through in my head…I’ll be curious to hear what others think.
Anyway, I'm quite proud of the work that went into this. I spent a lot of time whittling down 20-minute (and longer) improv sessions, re-sampling pieces of them on other equipment, and doing a ton of work to carve, chop, and condense things into a more concise presentation of my thoughts than I usually do. Most of the work was done with my laptop, iPad, and Octatrack, and all of it was recorded in the span of about a month.
Taylor Deupree will be mastering the album for me. For the purposes of sharing them here, these preview tracks are just volume normalized exports of the premaster mixes I sent to him.
I don't have a concrete plan for the release quite yet...but I'm looking forward to sharing it in some form, eventually. On that note, I’d be curious to hear from you if you know of any labels accepting demos…
Credits for the album will look like this:
Music produced and recorded by Andrew Tasselmyer in Philadelphia, PA
Mastered by Taylor Deupree in Pound Ridge, NY
Photo taken by Andrew Tasselmyer in Vestmannaeyjar, Iceland
Field recordings in track 1 by Steven Kemner in Virginia Beach, VA
Field recordings in track 4 by Dave Mantel in Albuquerque, NM
Field recordings in track 6 by Andrew Tasselmyer in unknown location
Field recordings in track 8 by Sean Galloway in Connemara, Ireland
Here are the preview tracks:
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